The Beast
** Scroll to the bottom of this post for video goodness **
The problem with the way most video cameras render an image is that their sensors are terribly small. The average sensor size is 1/3″, a tiny fraction of the size of a full super 35 film frame, or even a 16mm film frame. The image captured is essentially a cutout of the image you would see with a larger sensor, for example:
You have the exact same depth compression and depth of field properties with the large sensor, just a smaller view angle. So a wide angle lens for a traditional format becomes a long lens for consumer/prosumer video… but it still has the geometry and depth of field characteristics of a wide-ass lens. There is a subtle wierdness that comes from this, and many people are able to pick out that material shot on 1/3″ sensors is video, even when the frame rate and shuttor speed and other properties are brought in line with film, although they may not be able to express why.
There are several companies that produce professionally engineered devices to resolve this problem. The trick is to render the lens’s image on a full sized frame, and then record that frame with the video camera. The frame being recorded by the video camera is 2 dimensional, so the depth of field and geometry characteristics of the video camera’s ultra-wide lens will have no effect on it.
All of these devices, however, cost well over $1000. So instead, I mounted an old Minolta SLR camera to a piece of wood. And then I ripped the back off of the Minolta, glued the mirror into the open position, and glued a piece of unmarked ground glass where the film frame would normally be.
I then screwed a macro lens to the front of my Canon HV20 so it could focus on this frame right up close, and then I mounted that to the wood as well.
The horrible masking-taped construction paper is to block out light that isn’t coming from the lens itself… I really should find a way to make it more attractive.
And the end result, although The Beast itself is ugly, is fairly attractive, I think. I had nothing and no one better to shoot, so I’m afraid you’ll have to watch the family dogs fighting.
And here, without further ado, is The Beast in action:
Untitled from Andrew LeBlanc on Vimeo.